DURING the days that followed I went on working with an impetus and a facility that appeared to increase steadily the nearer I approached the end of my task. Antonio continued to come every morning, and I, when the first embarrassment was over, regarded him again with unimpaired, curiosity. I felt that there was now a bond between him and me; I might have severed this bond at the very beginning, if I had dismissed him as my wife had suggested; but I had not done this, and a new relationship, tacit but recognizable, had resulted. I find it difficult to explain the feeling that this relationship gave me. At first there had been, between me and Antonio, the usual relationship that exists between superior and inferior; after my wife's accusation this relationship had been modified: the superior was also the husband whose honour was assailed or who might believe his honour to be assailed, the inferior was also the assailant, or might believe himself to be the assailant. But these two relationships were in fact purely conventional, founded as they were, the first on the fictitious state of dependence and authority conferred by the giving and taking of a wage, the second on the no less fictitious moral obligation imposed by the matrimomal tie. In suggesting that I should replace Antonio, my wife had really suggested that I should accept these two conventions without taking into account the particular effective factors in the case. I, however, had rejected her suggestion, and Antonio had not been replaced. Now I felt that, as a consequence of my refusal, there had grown up between him and me a new relationship, which was certainly much more real because it was founded upon the situation as it was and not as it ought to have been; only this relationship could be neither classified nor defined, and it made possible many consequences. I knew that, having refused to behave as anyone else in my place would have behaved — that is, as a superior and as a husband — I had opened the way to all sorts of possibilities, since everything now depended upon the developments in the real situation, independent of convention, in which we found ourselves. I saw that, in substance, the attitude suggested to me by my wife, conventional as it was, was the only tenable attitude if one wanted the situation to retain a recognizable external appearance. Outside this attitude anything was possible, and everything dissolved and fell to pieces. This attitude allowed each of us to keep to a well-known, pre-established role; outside this attitude our identities became blurred, misty, interchangeable.
These reflections made me understand the usefulness of moral standards and social conventions, which are, of course, external, but are indispensable for checking natural disorder and bringing it to order. And yet, on the other hand, I saw that, once moral standards and social conventions have been rejected, this same disorder must perforce tend to come to a standstill and systematize itself upon a foundation of sheer necessity. In other words, apart from the solution proposed by my wife, there remained one other solution which would be dictated by the actual nature of the circumstances. It was rather like a river which is either confined between artificial embankments or is allowed to spread out according to the slope and the accidents of the ground: in both cases, though by different methods and with different effects, it will form a bed of its own by which it may run away to the sea. But this second solution, the most natural and the most fateful, was still unlikely to come about, and, as it seemed to me, would perhaps never come about at all: Antonio would continue to come and shave me, I would finish my work and, later on, my wife and I would go away, and I would never know how much truth there had been in my wife's accusations. I can now set forth these reflections of mine in an orderly and lucid fashion. But, at the time, they were not so much reflections as vague feelings, and it was as though they proceeded from an indisposition caused by consciousness, which had taken the place of my previous agreeable unconsciousness.
It may perhaps seem surprising that I should have thought, or rather felt, in this way at the very moment when the thing was going on and was developing under my very eyes, and when my most precious affections were, or might seem to me to be, threatened. But I wish to repeat what I have already said more than once: I was absorbed in creative activity (or thought I was) and everything else was indifferent to me. Of course I had not ceased to love my wife and to have a natural sense of my own honour; but artistic creation, by a strange miracle, had removed the heavy stamp of urgency from these things and had transferred it to the pages of the book that I was engaged in writing. If my wife, instead of accusing Antonio of being disrespectful to her, had revealed to me that she had seen him wiping his razor on one of the pages of my story, I certainly should not have speculated upon his ignorance or his irresponsibility; I should have dismissed him at once. And yet such a fault was certainly more understandable, more justifiable, more pardonable than the fault that had been imputed to him. What was it that made me indifferent to what he had done in relation to my wife and, on the other hand, made me react so violently to the possibility of his spoiling my work? This was where the mystery came in of which I had been aware in him from the beginning, the mystery that Angelo's revelations had quite failed to dispel and which lay, in truth, more in myself than in him. It was a mystery, when all is said and done, that is created, and always will be created, every time that one leaves the surface of things and descends into the depths.
As for my wife, she no longer came and joined me, as before, while Antonio was shaving me, and I suppose that, until the barber had left the house, she remained shut up in her own room. In the end this attitude of hers annoyed me because it showed that she was clinging to her first conventional reaction, and had no intention of exchanging it for an approach such as mine, rational, speculative. I asked her — I do not remember how, or on what occasion — why she never appeared now during the morning. She answered me directly, without any irritation but with just a touch of impatience: 'But, Silvio. . really, sometimes I almost doubt your intelligence. . how could I possibly appear? That man hasn't been punished for his insolence.. .If I appeared he might think I have forgiven him — or worse… By not appearing I allow him to think that I preferred to avoid a scandal and so didn't tell you.'
I don't know what demon of subtlety prompted me to reply: 'He may also have thought that you didn't notice. . And this makes it worse; you're allowing him to think that you did notice and that, in spite of that, you're not doing anything about it or making me do anything.'
'The only possible thing,' she answered calmly, 'would have been to give him the sack that same day.'